 Welcome to the sports playbook where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Jen Nelson, the coordinator of events in a logistics at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. We are here to discuss Olympic and Paralympic Sport Travel, Coordinating Athlete Logistics. Welcome, Jen. Thanks so much for having me, Angela. I really appreciate it and looking forward to being on the show today. Excellent. We are so excited to have you. I know you work for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, also known as the USOPC. So describe for us what you do for the USOPC. Sure. So I've been here at the USOPC a little over three and a half years now. I am in the events and logistics department, but I focus primarily on air travel. So there's three of us on the book air travel for the USOPC. The whole organization kind of refers us to the team behind the team. So we really do the logistics behind the scenes to really ensure that the athletes once they're on the ground, everything's kind of taken care for them. So yeah, so we focus on air travel primarily for games. So I've worked on the games, the Pan Am games we had in Lima in 2019, Tokyo in 2020, and then that was of course a challenge with the postponement. And then we just finished up Beijing a few months ago. So yeah, it's been busy the past few years and looking ahead to the next games as well. Absolutely. That lots of challenges and we're definitely going to get into some of those challenges. So basically you're involved in booking the air travel. You have colleagues who work on the housing and accreditation. So you're really kind of making things as smooth for the athletes, kind of like a travel agent would do coordinating those logistics. And you mentioned a couple of the events that you coordinate travel for. Can you can you expand on that? What what other events do you also coordinate the air travel for? So we do youth. It's called the youth games as well. So they had in La Sonde, Switzerland in 2020. I primarily booked the youth game. So that's I think it was ages 12 to 18. Primarily just games. So it kind of goes in flow. So our next games coming up will be in 2023. Pan American and Parapan games in Santiago, Chile and then Paris in 2024. We also do a few months ago after the games, the athletes and staff get to celebrate at the White House. So we did book all the travel for that. So with the Tokyo Post Poma in Beijing, since the games were so close together as the first time ever that they did a combined White House visit. So it was about over 800 flights. We had about three weeks to book them. So like I said, it's all hands on deck. And then we got everyone to enjoy their time and they got to see the president. So I know they got to celebrate their achievements. So it was a really nice event. That is amazing. And what an honor for them, I'm sure, to take part in that ceremony. So if you were looking at a typical year, how many events, how many people do you coordinate travel for? What's the typical average year for you? Oh, gosh, a lot. Hard to say a specific number. I focus primarily on Paralympic bookings. So that alone is about over 20 sports or summer sports. Definitely have more teams. You know, you have wheelchair rugby, wheelchair basketball. So even though the numbers for Paralympic is a little less, it does come with challenges because, you know, sometimes you have some visually impaired athletes or athletes with wheelchairs. That kind of adds a whole added aspect to the travel component. And I do book about 10 to 15 Olympic sports. My boss does the remaining of them. But, yeah, I'd say a few thousand, especially we bring a lot of staff to games to probably two to three hundred staff, like I said, not only my department, we work closely with a department called Games Operations. So they're kind of the core. We work together, events, logistics and games operations to really help operate the games. Like you mentioned earlier, housing, logistics, transport, accreditation, it's all it's all connected. And Air Travel is kind of that first first piece of first. They got to fly over there before they can get their accreditation and housing. So it's nice to work together with everyone. Yeah. And you mentioned you do a lot of bookings for the Paralympic athletes. So those are athletes with disabilities of all kinds. And you mentioned that there's some maybe some special things that you have to consider when you're doing booking for them. So what are some of the things that maybe you have to consider when you're booking travel for these first and foremost? I guess there's a certain it just depends on the plane. But there's a certain amount of wheelchairs that are allowed on the plane at once, especially in case of emergency. So that's kind of a big thing we work with the airline to say, OK, we're only allowed to have 20 wheelchair passengers. OK, well, we have both the wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby that want to fly the same day. So maybe we have to pick have them go through a different hub city, stuff like that. So it's kind of juggling a big, big puzzle. So aside from wheelchairs, sometimes with our visually impaired, we'll have service dogs. So that's just something we have to let the airline know ahead of time, the kind of the breed of the dog, how much the dog weighs, stuff like that. Additionally, with the wheelchairs, sometimes not everyone's able to walk fully. So they do have to get an aisle chair on the plane. So that's something we also have to let the airline and flight attendants know ahead of time that way. You know, they're boarding early than the other passengers, that way they have it all ready to go so they can help assist them on the plane. So lots of different aspects. Sometimes there's minors. So that's something to if they're traveling with a parent or kind of like a chaperone, that making sure their tickets are linked together. So definitely not a one end be all. It kind of just depends on the situation, the teams and yeah. Our minors considered under 18 or do the airlines have a different kind of class of occasion and I don't have all that memorize. It depends on the airline. So I have the games. It's under 18, but each airline sometimes it's under 15, I think, or four, it just depends on the airline. Gotcha. But normally what can happen, though, is a coach. Let's say there is a minor, but we'll just kind of try to pair them up with the coach if their parents aren't able to attend something like that. So but there's a lot to coordinate and you mentioned wheelchairs. You mentioned service dogs, but there's there's also other pieces of sporting equipment if we're talking on the Olympic side. We have athletes bringing pole vaults, cycling athletes bringing bicycles, equestrian athletes need their horses. Canoing is a sport now in the Olympics. That's that's a lot of big pieces of equipment. And you mentioned there's limitations that the airlines have and restrictions on sizes and the types of bags they can transport. So how do you get all of the things that they need to the location of where they're going to compete? We try our best ahead of time. We have meetings with all the teams, especially leading up to the games to try to capture as much information as we can. So we ask those team leaders, OK, how many of your athletes are bringing surfboards or pole vaults and what are the weight and dimensions? So we can pass that along to our airline or agents. And right now our airline partners Delta Airlines. So we'll work with our contacts there and generally what they do is, you know, because not every athlete lives in the same hometown. So they're flying from all over the US, small towns, big towns. And then we're trying to pick one hub airport for them to kind of go over the water too. So these smaller, smaller airports have smaller planes. So primarily what we do is we'll let them know the equipment information Delta will kind of pass it down. They call it they're like station managers or leaders at each airport that way. Kind of they're aware that way they can kind of track the equipment all the way through. And for some like example, Colorado Springs is a really kind of a small town. So if they need to fly out of Denver, sometimes the airline will ship up their equipment on a flight the day early or larger flights. So that's just kind of up to the airline of how they'll handle it. But the more information they have, the better to make sure everyone's equipment makes it there safely. So yeah, a lot of coordinating and probably fingers crossed that flights soon get canceled, things of that nature. And who all gets to travel? You mentioned a little bit about coaches. We've primarily been speaking about athletes, but there's there's other support staff. You mentioned some of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee staff goes. But who else are you booking travel for? Yeah, so a whole bunch of people. So each team is sort of different of who they bring. I don't understand it all. It really depends on accreditation and kind of allocations. The bigger the team, easy way to look at the bigger the team, the more people you can bring. So track and field is a huge team. They bring a lot of staff. Track and field will have personal coaches. You'll have medical trainers, athletic trainers, some teams even have their own mental health or that college is kind of doctors as well. So really just depends on the team kind of, you know, usually what the athletes and staff prefer. They kind of pick, you know, they get to pick who they want to bring. In terms of the US OPC, just all sorts of pretty much everyone, almost everyone gets to go to the games. You know, you have your support staff on the ground. You have your marketing. You have your cons. You have we have our own medical department. We have mental health. We have you name it pretty much everyone goes there. So yeah, pretty much all hands on deck at the games. When I'm on the ground at the games, I work. It's called airport operations. So behind leading up to the games, I do all the bookings. And then once we're on the ground, once the teams land, we actually help them get their bags and baggage claim and find their way to the bus to the village or the hotel or wherever they're staying and then they're kind of on their way. So for really the first touchpoint that they see, familiar face and name, at least if we haven't met them once they get to the games and then start their journey. So that has to be reassuring to see a familiar face. And of course, someone who speaks there at the language and knows is intimately familiar with where they need to go and what they need to do and coordinating all these pieces. How do you keep track of all this communication? What's your process? Yeah, it's a lot. Like I said, I probably have one. I have all the Paralympic. I'm solely the Paralympic and then at least 10 to 15 of the Olympic lots of spreadsheets. So like I kind of mentioned, we have meetings probably about once a month or once every two months, depending on the schedules with each team. So there are NGPs, national governing bodies. So a whole bunch of people are on this meeting, 20 plus, you know, and it kind of goes in order of accreditation, air travel, village. So all the steps kind of flow together. So we kind of have databases where we keep our notes and stuff like that. But for air travel, yeah, primarily just spreadsheets. So we'll have each all the teams, you know, we need their legal names. We need their date of birth. We need what's the airport code they're starting in, where they're ending. If they have any equipment, if they have any accessibility needs. So that's kind of how we keep track of all the teams. So it's lots of like lots of spreadsheets. And then from that, I also work on our manifest. So once all the flights are booked, we have I put into every leg of the flight. So if they're starting in Denver and then connecting and then getting to Tokyo, every leg of their flight. And then that translates to we have a program called Tableau, which kind of generates a document. So not just us, but everyone in the organization that needs to see it, that's on the ground, can view these reports and kind of filter it, how they need. So people know where everyone is at all times. So it's a good thing. If a piece of equipment goes missing in transit, are you the one that has to track it down? Or who's the best as we can? So I mean, like I said, we send all this information to all the airlines ahead of time so they know Team USA traveling. And they're alerting all their station managers and pretty much trying to give us priority. So if that does happen, which, you know, every so often it does, you know, people have a late connection and it just wasn't able to get loaded or something. But we'll work on that with the airline on the ground, generally in baggage claim, or they'll have a support kind of equipment desk. And usually, at least with United, when they were our previous airline, we kind of had a baggage supervisor contact. That was his full job was just packing bags. So we're still I'm sure eventually we'll meet someone with Delta who's like him as well. But so, yeah, we kind of work our connections and do all they can to make sure their bags make it there to floss. Yeah, but it's not always easy, right? Because we have athletes who get sick and injured. So what do you have to do when you have to substitute travel? Like an alternate's now getting called up to go compete. Yeah. What's what's your process? You know, that happens all the time very, very last minute. And I guess we're used to it, you know, games time. I have my phone on work phone on me pretty much 24 seven. And that happened, especially in Beijing. We unfortunately, we had some winter athletes who got injured and had to, you know, we they need to fly back to Boston because they need to get surgery. So yeah, it's just something we're just prepared for. And hopefully the team has kind of a plan in place of who they want to send next, all kind of depends on selection procedures. And like I said, each team is kind of different of how they do things and what's allowed. But yeah, so we'll just be ready to book someone if needed. So and how exactly are you informed that a change needs to happen and someone needs to go home? What? Yeah, they're a key point person that you communicate with. So each team, each NGB has what we call their team leader, kind of like the team parent, I guess you could say. So they're the ones that we contact for air travel. And I'm sure other departments talk with them as well in the coaches. So they're kind of our point person. That way we're not going directly to the athlete. So they kind of let us know everything that, you know, if there's any issues or if I need anything, they kind of go to us. So kind of a chain reaction, you know, either if we're abroad, we'll use WhatsApp or email or just other kind of communication devices. So that way we can kind of get it done quickly. So yeah, absolutely. Sometimes the timing is really important with with that, I would imagine. Have you ever had an athlete or are aware of an athlete who wasn't able to travel by plane because of their injury or sickness but needed to get maybe some medical treatment? Yeah, not that I can recall. I know I think people maybe if they were injured before, maybe just maybe they couldn't fly when they were, you know, supposed to or something like that. But I'm sure it happens all the time is unfortunately, people get injured. That's kind of just how it goes. And they're not able to compete, which I'm sure is really hard for them. So but hopefully everyone stays healthy. Well, unfortunately, COVID has been a problem. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about the impact on travel and sport because we've had games and events cancelled, athletes, coaches get sick and are in need of quarantine, flights have been cancelled and rescheduled. This is definitely evident with the Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The whole games were delayed an entire year. They were scheduled to take place in the summer of 2020, but were eventually held in 2021 and for control measure, spectators weren't allowed to even go. And this amount of support staff was significantly reduced, particularly for the Paralympics, which is even maybe more important to have support staff. So talk to me about flexibility, communication, making those changes. What kind of challenges did you face with Tokyo? For sure. Yeah, COVID. I never, you know, I remember getting that announcement that the games were postponed and couldn't even believe it. So just just from that moment on, even just, you know, we had some flights booked already and United was our previous partner and Delta was supposed to start. So Delta was nice enough to let United keep the games for the fall 2021. So they got to finish off the partnership. But, you know, we had to cancel tickets. We had e-credits. We had just it was a lot of just against kind of spreadsheet and data kind of collection and capture. And then kind of almost starting from square one, you know, we had all these everything planned, all the dates and everything kind of all in place and lined up and pretty much had to start from scratch. But yeah, so just COVID in general, just definitely not a normal games. Super sad for these athletes that they couldn't have their, you know, parents that have been helping them their whole life train and probably gone to most of all their competitions and college and stuff like that, not be able to go. So that's definitely sad. But I know NBC did a kind of a great job at broadcasting and got to connect the families and stuff like that. So that was super nice and just spectators. Yeah, spectators to Tokyo, I think was going to be such a huge revenue generation. I know people definitely will look forward to Paris. I'll hopefully the next kind of normal games. But yeah, just so many COVID protocols just to even get into the country like can't tell you how many documents and apps we had to download and we had to, you know, track our health every day in an after temperature. We had to do a COVID test every day. We had to do before we got into country. It was called an activity plan. So the organizing committee Tokyo really wanted to know where are you going to be almost every day of the games? So pretty much, you know, if you're in the village, that's kind of your area or if you're in a sport, then you put down kind of your venue. So they just really wanted to track everyone's movements. Even on arrival, like I said, I was there working at the airport. Just we'd have to wait for everyone on the whole entire plane to get COVID tested, even if we weren't it wasn't all team USA people. If someone had a positive, they kind of had to retest everyone. People were could be close contacts if you're few rows of front and behind. So it was just it was just really crazy. Just the amount of yeah, just how it really affected every aspect of the games. And I was there for about over a month and I could see Tokyo Disneyland from my hotel, but couldn't go. So that was just hard. But, you know, I really bonded with our coworkers, you know, we're kind of all in all in the same situation, had to make the best of it. So at least my outing was kind of going to the airport every day. So got to see some different faces, but couldn't experience Tokyo's culture as much as we like. So I'll just have to go back one day. So there you go, land it on your own. And typically you have about a year and a half of time between the summer games and the winter games. But this was really unusual with Tokyo games being delayed a year. And so you had for about six months to get up and running for Beijing, China for the winter games. Was this enough time for you to coordinate the travel logistics for the winter games? I don't know how we did it. Somehow we did. I didn't sleep probably for a year, but I got, you know, went to Tokyo 2020, August of 2021, got back September. And it was pretty much full force Beijing. People were leaving for Beijing in January. So we worked around the clock. I actually didn't end up going to Beijing along with some of my air travel colleagues just because with technology and kind of stuff over there, we are better able to support air travel on the ground. So I spent about two months in LA from January to March, helping with our send offs there over to Beijing. So yeah, definitely a challenge. One thing, too, Beijing wasn't allowing US airlines to fly. So originally, Delta had a route from Seattle. And I think LA when we were kind of planning before covid stuff. But so they weren't allowing those routes to fly. So we actually had a charter for Beijing. So that was a whole new aspect. I think my boss said they chartered 20 plus years ago. So it's been a while. So kind of our launch spot was in LA. So that was just a whole kind of new game for us trying to, you know, normally teams fly from all over the different routes based on where they live. So to get everyone to LA and then Beijing also had very strict covid protocols. You had to get a special covid test from an approved consulate. And so that was in LA. That's kind of how we picked, kind of picked our launching spot based on a big hub airport and where we could kind of do all of our Beijing protocols. So people were pretty much in LA for about two days before they flew to Beijing to do all their covid testing. Again, a lot of apps and you had to get a whole green health code. And it was a whole just lots of paperwork and stuff like that. And then also in LA, everyone kind of gets their team USA gear. So that's the fun part. Actually, I think this is from the Beijing kit. So, you know, all the athletes, especially in the winter time, they give huge big puffy jackets and boots. And it's really cool, especially kind of knowing how kind of what apparels for what. So if you get a medal, you have to wear specific things on the metal stand. They have their village wear. They have competition stuff. So it's really neat. That's kind of the fun part. They do a whole social media thing and they get their Olympic ring. And it's kind of a whole really neat thing, a few hour thing for them. So it's really cool to see that whole experience and be a part of it. So that's pretty unusual then from what you're describing, that to route everybody through LA as the kind of the starting point to go internet for international travel. And what about coming back for people able to fly closer to their home location? So coming back also, they had had to charter as well. We actually were able to pick Salt Lake City as our ending location just because it's a delta hub and we have a lot of our ski teams are kind of based in Park City or Salt Lake City. That way they could just drive home and they were good to go. So then that way, Salt Lake City also was a good hub to connect for everyone else. So kind of chose that on purpose instead of flying back to LA. We do have some teams after the Olympics and Paralympics, like they're still competing in other events. So a lot of them flew back to Europe. There was other airlines that were allowed to fly like Air France, KOM, stuff like that. So we did have some teams fly through Europe. We also used Japan Airlines in LAX. They were one of an approved airline. So they had to fly through Japan, but we did have some people that weren't able to fly on the charter that wanted to go earlier or later. So we had them fly to Beijing through Tokyo and then same with on the return if they needed to fly back and not to Salt Lake City. So lots of different routes. And you've mentioned a few times about the transition from airline partners. So United Airlines used to be the airline partner for the U.S. OPC. And now it's Delta Airlines. They've agreed to a $400 million deal, which in part gives them the status as the official airline for the Olympic and Paralympic teams. So they have an eight-year agreement that started in January 2021. So this includes booking athlete travel on Delta Airlines for Olympic and Paralympic games. So this replaces a 40-year partnership with United Airlines. So what impact has switching airline partners had on your job coordinating travel? Yeah, definitely excited for the partnership. You know, they're through the games since 2028 and LA is going to be a great game. So I think Delta, they just actually had us down there at their headquarters a few weeks ago. We got to do a pilot training and a flight attend training. So they're definitely super and engaged and excited for their partnership. Definitely sad to leave United. More so, my colleagues have worked with these agents for a while. We actually had our own United Olympic desk that booked specifically just for Team USA. So that was kind of hard to leave those agents. And they had to kind of go get a new job. But we're excited for Delta and looking forward to the next few years. And hopefully no more not as many COVID protocols. And we can kind of have that, you know, our flight routes back to normal. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I imagine now you're kind of looking at probably one of the key changes that you mentioned having their hub airports. So probably routing athletes through different cities is probably part of, and connecting airports is probably part of the change that you're experiencing. Exactly. Yeah, especially unfortunately Delta isn't a Denver hub. And so whereas United was, so that's something, you know, if we're flying to the East Coast or West Coast, we have to generally connect in Salt Lake City or Minneapolis or Detroit or Atlanta. So I think some of our staff are a little upset that they have to have one or two connections. But that's just kind of how it goes. And hopefully in the future, they'll kind of expand their routes and maybe have, you know, Colorado Springs or kind of Denver flights. So there you go. There you go. And does having an airline partner mean that athletes and their support staff travel for free? I wish. No, no. What does that mean exactly? They just kind of, you know, they're our priority airline, you know, they give us a little bit of a discount. So, you know, we want to try to fly Delta as much as we can. So not for free, but I think especially the athletes and staff, a lot of people tend to like Delta on a very nice airline. So I think everyone's kind of excited about the partnership. So who actually pays for things? You mentioned maybe you get a little bit of a discount from your airline partner, but is it the USOPC's responsibility to pick up the tab? We have the national governing bodies for each of the sports. Do they pick up the tab? Who is going to be ultimately financially responsible for the travel piece? So day-to-day travel, when they're traveling to just, you know, they have so many, a huge calendar of events and competitions that NGB does pick up that travel, because every NGB is kind of different on what they need to do and where they need to go. But for games, the USOPC does pick up the majority. They do pay for all the athletes. And then, like I said, for each NGB kind of just depends on their allocation. We will pay for a few of their staff members based on team size, and then the NGB will have to pay for the rest. So it's not, you know, straight cut. It just kind of just depends on the allocations, but for the most part, USOPC pays for a lot of the travel. And I'm sure those national governing bodies are always advocating for more thoughts being covered. Well, what else can you tell us about your job that our viewers may not know or may not realize? Oh, gosh, I guess just how much, you know, everyone watches the Olympics and Paralympics on TV and sees this, this, you know, the competitions and, you know, all the ceremonies and stuff. I guess working in sports that really makes you, especially, like I said, being the team behind the team, it really makes you appreciate how much logistics and stuff goes into it. It's not just, you know, an easy thing overnight. There's so many moving parts that we have to work to together just to really make sure that those athletes, when they're on the ground, all they're worrying about is competing. So it's, you know, it's really awesome to kind of, you know, I've always watched sports on TV, but really being a part of it and seeing what goes into it. Well, thank you, Jen, for your insight into the Olympic and Paralympic sport travel and coordinating the athlete logistics. Thank you to our viewers for joining us today on the sports playbook. In two weeks, our guest is Maggie McKinley from the University of Cincinnati, who will discuss current challenges in college athletics. We will see you then.